A correspondent tells me that if I need a good laugh I should look at the clown show that is National Review for Stephen Moore. I do so, and find Moore trying to explain some numbers produced by the Congressional Budget Office: Stephen Moore and Phil Kerpen on the Bush Tax Cuts & the CBO on NRO Financial: ...the CBO report did conclude was that the total tax share by the richest 1 percent declined modestly from 2001 to 2004. But that wasn’t because of the tax cut. It was because of the recession. When the economy contracts and incomes fall as they did in 2001 and 2002, tax payments by the wealthy fall the fastest. This is because of the progressive rate structure of the income tax... But if either Stephen Moore or Phil Kerpen had read even to the end of the first paragraph of the CBO report they are "explaining," they would have recognized that the recession had nothing to do with it: the CBO took the tax laws that are currently planned to be in force for each year from 2002 through 2014, and analyzed what those tax laws would collect if applied to the taxpayer...

Susan Q. Stranahan of CJR Campaign Desk appears to want reporters to misrepresent the Swift Boat Veterans: CJR Campaign Desk: Archives: ...John Kerry's decision to come out swinging against attacks on his war record dominates campaign coverage today -- and in their rush to report the juicy controversy, many in the press glossed over a critical fact about the Bush campaign's relationship to an independent groups running the ads.... The Times and the Post,along with the Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, and USA Today all duly reported Kerry's charge linking the group to the Bush White House. That's John Kerry's take on the Swift Boat Veterans, and the campaign press should be careful that they report it as such.... [T]he media also is obligated to note that... Swift Boat Veterans is an organization independent of the Bush campaign and Republican National Committee. It may be funded and advised by several people with ties to the Republican Party... but it is officially unaffiliated with candidate or party.... "Officially" unaffiliated. But is that reality? Every time a Bush runs--against John Anderson in Connecticut in 1980, against Mike Dukakis in 1988, against Clinton, against John McCain in 2000--this kind of thing happens. It...

A Question: Kieran Healy writes: ...the horrors of Stalin don’t invalidate the fundamental insights of Marxists... which reminds me of a question I have long wanted to ask: Just what are the fundamental (valid) insights of Marxism? I ask as someone who is. I think, closer to "Marxism" than almost everybody else on the Berkeley campus. That is, I believe that in the process of going about the business of making, using, and consuming the things people need and want to continue their daily lives, humans enter into social and economic arrangements of production, association, exploitation, and exchange that form patterns and have consequences that none of them have willed, and that these arrangements of production, association, exploitation, and exchange--these "modes of production, as it were"--form the base, the soil in which the rest of society is rooted and out of which it grows. That is what Marx believed, and if I'm not the closest one to that position on the Berkeley campus today, people who are closer are very scarce on the ground. But what valid analytical insights does Marxism draw and develop from this starting point? The "dictatorship of the proletariat" stuff is the worst political idea in...

Once again the New York Times pulls its punches and blows the lead: The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Anti-Kerry Ad: by KATE ZERNIKE and JIM RUTENBERG: After weeks of taking fire over veterans' accusations that he had lied about his Vietnam service record to win medals and build a political career, Senator John Kerry shot back yesterday, calling those statements categorically false and branding the people behind them tools of the Bush campaign. His decision to take on the group directly was a measure of how the group that calls itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has catapulted itself to the forefront of the presidential campaign. It has advanced its cause in a book, in a television advertisement and on cable news and talk radio shows, all in an attempt to discredit Mr. Kerry's war record, a pillar of his campaign. The Swift Boat smear campaign needs its context--a quote from John McCain calling it a smear campaign would have been nice. And the important thing for readers to know is not that Kerry "claims" that they are tools of the Bush campaign, and not that they have "catapulted......

Kevin Drum says that Virginia Postrel is enabling the Republican Slime Machine: The Washington Monthly: I have to admit that this sounds like a more subtle critique than the usual media bashing from the right ("They don't want us to know the truth!"), but it amounts to the same thing: Virginia is insisting that the media should figure out some way to report a smear story even though they know it's a smear story and there's no actual evidence to back it up. Damned if I know why anyone who wants to maintain even the pretense of being a libertarian is not using all their strength to leverage George W. Bush out of the White House. To even pretend to be "even-handed" is to demonstrate that your commitment to liberty is of a summer soldier and a sunshine patriot kind. The presence in office of George W. Bush and his henchmen is a horror, as Michael Froomkin reminds us this morning: Discourse.net: 'Free Country' Datum III--"Material Witness" Detentions: The New York Times reports on the saga of Abdullah al Kidd. 1. Abdullah al Kidd is a US citizen; 2. Mr. Kidd was at no point charged with doing anything wrong,...

Another very strange column from the Wall Street Journal's Alan Murray. He talks about two big objections to George W. Bush's "ownership society"--the fact that it is almost surely nothing but cover for another round of right-wing class warfare, and the fact that Bush has been "happy to give away candy but [has] little stomach for administering the medicine." But he leaves out the third reason--the big reason, the Elephant-in-the-Living-Room reason--to run screaming into the night at the thought of a big Bush initiative. Even if it were well-intentioned (and not just cover for another round of right-wing class warfare), even if Bush were willing to make difficult choices (which he has never shown any ability to do), the Bush administration is still incompetent, and its attempts to make policy have almost invariably been horrible botches. As Daniel Davies wrote a year and a half ago: Can anyone... give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics: It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration. It was significant enough in scale that I'd have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it). It wasn't in some important way completely f*****...

Searching for a way to put pressure on Alan Greenspan not to raise interest rates before the election, the Wall Street Journal editorial page finds one Melvyn Kraus of the Hoover Institution, author of How NATO Weakens the West. Kraus attacks Greenspan for: WSJ.com - Irrationally Active: rais[ing] interest rates last week and signal[ing] more hikes are on the way in the midst of an unquestioned economic slowdown, and ahead of sensitive national elections... What is the source of Greenspan's problems, according to Kraus? It is that Greenspan pays attention to economic conditions and forecasts when he makes monetary policy: [W]hat's making U.S. monetary policy so unstable in the past year -- waiting too long to get started with interest rate hikes and now being relentless on the ascent -- is that the Federal Reserve keeps changing its mind which "bad" it needs to correct. First it was recession. Then it became deflation. Now it's inflation.... And this too can change if, for example, the Fed was to become convinced that the present economic slowdown is more than temporary. It is not inconceivable that within a few months the Fed's most recent statement that "the economy nevertheless appears poised to...

Liz Cox Barrett bangs her head against the wall as she contemplates the "reporting" of Fox News's Catherine Donaldson-Evans: CJR Campaign Desk: Archives: On Saturday, Fox News's Catherine Donaldson-Evans retread this too-trodden territory, summoning yet another well-known, plucky single gal. "... [T]he Bridget Joneses among America's voters might prove as important as a swing state in the upcoming presidential election," Donaldson-Evans reported. Reminding readers that Bridget Jones "is, of course, fictitious," Donaldson-Evans asserted that the unlucky-in-love book/film protagonist nonetheless "has come to represent singles everywhere." And "with 80 million of them living in this country and recent findings that they're less likely to vote than 'Smug Marrieds,'" Donaldson-Evans counseled the candidates that they "would be wise to go after the unwed to help win the White House."... Contrary to the story's headline, "Campaigns Consider Singles in 2004 Race," the candidates don't seem to be particularly focused on "Bridget Jones" voters. "Neither the Bush-Cheney nor the Kerry-Edwards campaigns are specifically trying to appeal to singles," Donaldson-Evans reported in paragraph eight. The fact that Bridget Jones lives in Greater London, and is not a citizen of the United States but a subject of the Queen of England *might* be a reason that...

Dan Froomkin is bemused at how George W. Bush rewrites history. Does he really think now that he didn't oppose the 9/11 Commission? Does he think that our press corps is so lousy that he can say whatever comes into his head and nobody will call him on it? Bush Goes Off Message (washingtonpost.com): Didn't Oppose the 9/11 Commission? "KING: You first were opposed to the 9/11 Commission and then changed. Why? "G. BUSH: Not really. "KING: You weren't opposed? "G. BUSH: Well, I just wanted to make sure that it was done the right way. I felt like that -- one of my concerns was that it would usurp the Congress' need to fully investigate." But Bush's aides at the time made it very clear that he didn't support the establishment of a commission, and Bush himself had this to say in May, 2002: "I, of course, want the Congress to take a look at what took place prior to September the 11th. But since it deals with such sensitive information, in my judgment, it's best for the ongoing war against terror that the investigation be done in the intelligence committee. There are committees set up with both Republicans...

All cover the story that Douglas Holtz-Eakin's CBO says that yes, the Bush "tax cuts" were tilted toward the rich. But nobody talks about the elephant in the living room--that the deficits produced by these tax cuts are raising the national debt, that the national debt has to be serviced (unless we want to see the economy collapse into hyperinflation), and that the burden of servicing the national debt will raise taxes in the future. What we are talking about is not a tax cut, but a tax shift--a shift in taxes from today's upper class to tomorrow's middle class. Why not talk about the elephant in the living room? It would give readers a better picture of what is going on. (Ed Andrews comes close, noting that Kerry has said that "the cuts were tilted so much in favor of the wealthy that they provided relatively little stimulus to the economy and set the stage for record budget deficits.") Jackie Calmes in the Wall Street Journal: WSJ.com - Budget Office Says Biggest Tax Cuts Go to Richest 1%: WASHINGTON -- President Bush's three tax-cut laws will reduce this year's income taxes for the richest 1% of taxpayers by an...

Bob Somerby writes: Brit admits that Bush is 'stretching.' But at the great Times, he's just "shrewd": SPINNING NUANCE: John Kerry? He’s much too “nuanced.” It’s a standard RNC talking-point—and there it is, nicely placed in a headline in today’s New York Times: NEW YORK TIMES HEADLINE For Now, Bush's Mocking Drowns Out Kerry's Nuanced Explanation of His War Vote No, it doesn’t get better than that—to get your spin-point right in a headline. But how dumb is your press corps willing to be? The new flap over Kerry’s stance on Iraq provides a brilliant example. What is Kerry’s stand on Iraq? Readers, get ready for some real brain-work! Here goes: Kerry says Bush should have had the authority to go to war, but then went to war prematurely. Wow! Have you finished scratching your heads about all the nuance involved in that statement? It’s hard to believe that any grown person could pretend that this is complex or confusing. But that’s the official RNC line—Kerry is simply filled with nuance—and obliging scribes are typing it up, pretending this claim makes good sense. One of those puzzled scribes is Sanger, who scratches his head in today’s piece about Kerry’s “nuanced...

Matthew Yglesias bangs his head against the wall as he contemplates the lack of professionalism shown by the Post's Executive and former Assistant Managing Editor: TAPPED: August 2004 Archives: HARD DETERMINISM AT THE POST. The Washington Post joins the list of media organizations taking a look back at their prewar coverage and concludes, as have the others, that they overplayed stories backing the administration line and underplayed more skeptical accounts. Then Karen DeYoung, a reporter and former Assistant Managing Editor, says something very odd: Bush, Vice President Cheney and other administration officials had no problem commanding prime real estate in the paper, even when their warnings were repetitive. "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power," DeYoung said. "If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said." And if contrary arguments are put "in the eighth paragraph, where they're not on the front page, a lot of people don't read that far." That's a pretty accurate characterization of what goes on, but there's nothing "inevitabl[e]" about it -- the paper could do things differently. Indeed, since they've concluded that this is the procedure that led them to create a misleading public impression...

It appears that some people at the Washington Post are beginning to think about admitting that it did not do its job. Former Assistant Managing Editor Karen DeYoung: "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power.... If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said.... [Contrary arguments are put] in the eighth paragraph, where they're not on the front page, a lot of people don't read that far": washingtonpost.com: The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story: "The paper was not front-paging stuff," said Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks. "Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?"... Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., "we were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war and were questioning the administration's rationale. Not enough of those stories were put on the front page. That was a mistake on...

*Sigh*. Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens: Mickey Kaus: This John Crudele column from Thursday's N.Y. Post is now looking mighty prescient. It also offers a relatively benign, statistical explanation for the weak July job growth numbers released today... The Crudele "explanation": New York Post Online Edition: seven: ...the Labor Department's so-called Net Birth/Death Adjustment tabulates July as one of only two months in which there are more companies dying and taking jobs away than creating new jobs. The other month is January, when Labor takes out a massive number of jobs because it assumes a large number of companies die off after Christmas. I assume the White House doesn't understand these assumptions because the small jobs gain in January — helped by these assumptions — set off a massive amount of administration bellyaching. Now let's look at what the Bureau of Labor Statistics says about its numbers: Employment Situation Summary : Table A. Major indicators of labor market activity, seasonally adjusted (Numbers in thousands) As an exercise for the reader, explain that one would not expect a predictable and regular seasonal pattern in the adjustments the BLS makes to the raw payroll data (to account for not-yet-known changes...

Kevin Drum asks if William Saletan has any hint of ironic awareness, and concludes that he does not: The Washington Monthly: SALETANISMS....Will Saletan complains today about John Kerry's stand on stem cell research: Why does Kerry call it a "ban on stem-cell research" instead of a ban on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell lines derived after Aug. 9, 2001? Because the shorter phrase, while scientifically inaccurate in four egregious ways, is more politically effective. This is pretty rich coming from a guy who spent two full months of his life bemoaning the fact that Kerry spends too much time explaining himself in detail. Sheesh....

Greg Mankiw (or someone good enough to spoof an originating address from inside the Executive Office of the President's class-C network: 198.137.240.x) emails: "Since I know you aim for honest, unbiased commentary on your blog, I know you will be interested in this new study from factcheck.org": Kerry's Dubious Economics : He says new jobs are paying $9,000 less than the old ones. That's not a fact. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention July 29 Kerry repeated a claim that the economy is creating jobs that pay $9,000 a year less than those they replace. He bases that on disputed analysis from a liberal think tank. In fact, economists disagree.... Even some Democratic economists say the economic numbers are simply too rough and contradictory.... And when Kerry said the "middle class is shrinking," he was referring to what happened in the recession of 2001 and the initially slow recovery of 2002. But the economy has picked up considerably in the 19 months since, so what was true then may be untrue when phrased in present tense.... Kerry bases his claim on an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the Economic Policy Institute. But the EPI figures don't support what Kerry said, because they...

Stephen W. Stromberg of Salon writes: The Washington Post reported on Saturday that Secretary of State Colin Powell won't be speaking at -- or perhaps even attending -- this year's Republican National Convention in New York. The article cited a "tradition" that Cabinet officials refrain from speaking at national conventions: "But in keeping with tradition, Cabinet officials do not speak at the conventions -- or other campaign events. So Powell will not appear. "'As secretary of state, I am obliged not to participate in any way, shape, fashion, or form in parochial, political debates. I have to take no sides in the matter,' Powell told the Unity: Journalists of Color Convention on Thursday. Powell was a featured speaker at the 2000 convention and even campaigned with Bush." Funny, because sitting Secretary of Education Rod Paige will address the Republican National Convention on August 31, the second night of the 2004 convention. And if you hark back to the days when the Republicans had sitting Cabinet members to speak at their national nominating conventions, the "tradition" seems even less, well, traditional. Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole addressed the 1988 Republican National Convention, and in 1984, Dole, Secretary of Health and Human...

I commit the mistake of following a link from Daniel Drezner* and wind up at the Weekly Standard, reading Irwin Stelzer, who writes: The Weekly Standard: Wal-Mart, which accounts for about 8 percent of all non-auto retail sales in the United States, reports that net sales for the four-week period ending July 30 increased by 10.9 percent over the same four weeks in 2003. Even Target, which has been struggling, reported an 8.8 percent increase in July sales over last year's levels. These figures bode well for the important back-to-school sales of clothes, computers, and bedding... When everyone else besides Stelzer uses Wal-Mart as a barometer of consumer spending, they use Wal-Mart's reports of same-store sales: what's the change in sales for those stores that are open now and were open a year ago? The Wal-Mart same-store sales number is not a 10.9% increase over last year, but a 3.2% increase. Lop off a couple of percentage points for inflation, and you realize that Wal-Mart's shoppers are only spending 1% more in real terms this year than last year. That's not a good number at all. That's an awful number. That doesn't "bode well" for back to school sales. Stelzer...

Yesterday, Dan Froomkin said: CJR Campaign Desk: Archives: I'd like to see a lot less stenography and lot more research. There's context here, people.... Don't just do he said/she said... Today I look at the New York Times business section, and find: The New York Times: The Data: A Job Picture Painted With Different Brushes: July was a poor month for job creation in the United States. July was an excellent month for job creation in the United States. That tale of two employment reports is true, and it continues a trend that has persisted for two and a half years. The discrepancies have made it possible for Republicans to herald a job recovery and for Democrats to deny one exists. Both sets of statistics were issued by the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics, but they come from very different surveys. One, the establishment survey, which questions 160,000 employers, paints the bleak picture. The other, the household survey, which questions 60,000 people about whether they or other family members are working, paints the better picture. Which is right? Because of its smaller sample size, the household survey is always more volatile, and month-to-month changes can be deceptive for that reason....

Bob of Unfogged writes: Unfogged: Clueless Posted by Bob on 08.06.04. At the UNITY: Journalists of Color Convention: Q Good morning. My name is Mark Trahant. I'm the editorial page editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a member of the Native American Journalist Association. (Applause.) Most school kids learn about the government in the context of city, county, state and federal. And, of course, tribal governments are not part of that at all. Mr. President, you've been a governor and a President, so you have a unique experience, looking at it from two directions. What do you think tribal sovereignty means in the 21st century, and how do we resolve conflicts between tribes and the federal and the state governments? THE PRESIDENT: Tribal sovereignty means that, it's sovereign. You're a -- you've been given sovereignty, and you're viewed as a sovereign entity. And, therefore, the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities. Now, the federal government has got a responsibility on matters like education and security to help, and health care. And it's a solemn duty. And from this perspective, we must continue to uphold that duty. I think that one of the most promising...

Dan Froomkin says I would have a *much* better opinion of the White House press corps if I confined myself to reading his column and the articles he recommends: Zachary Roth asks Dan Froomkin a question: CJR Campaign Desk: Archives: Zachary Roth: How would you assess the job the press has done covering the campaign so far, and covering the White House under Bush? What would you like to see more, or less, of? Dan Froomkin: I think the Washington Post White House correspondents are terrific. Generally speaking, though, I'd like to see a lot less stenography and lot more research. There's context here, people. In the blogosphere, you hear it over and over again: Don't just do he said/she said. I agree completely. But I also want to share a fascinating discovery that I've made: If you read a lot of White House coverage daily, which is what I do, you always find some reportage somewhere that's insightful, that's perceptive, that's penetrating, that's eagle-eyed. My column includes the best of the day's coverage, and that, day in and day out, is not at all bad....

Liz Cox Barrett of CJR Campaign Desk praises David Wessel: CJR Campaign Desk: Archives: ...we tip our hat to David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal. Wessel's "Capital" column is... the sort of piece Campaign Desk would like to see more of... much more of. Wessel takes the following vague (and grammatically challenged) Bush campaign sound bite... and dissects it.... Said Bush of Kerry in Canton, Ohio yesterday: "He said he's only going to raise the tax on the so-called rich. But you know how the rich is [sic]: They've got accountants. That means you pay. That means your small business pays. It means the farmers and ranchers pay."... Wessel explains each candidate's stance on "how heavily to tax Americans with incomes over $200,000 per year".... He confirms that Kerry wants to "raise the tax"... he reports by precisely how much and what Kerry says he will do with that money. Does Kerry's plan mean, as Bush claims, that "small business pays"[?]... The "bulk"... won't pay more under Kerry's plan. Readers then hear from an Urban Institute economist (and "Reagan tax official") who says that by cutting taxes now, but not cutting spending, "Mr. Bush is guaranteeing tax increases in...

I've gotten a note saying that I was unfair to New York Times reporter David Rosenbaum. Perhaps, but on looking back at Rosenbaum's coverage of the midsession budget review, I think not. Let's begin our story on July 13, 2004, when non-partisan budget expert Stan Collender writes about the midsession budget review on nationaljournal.com: Budget Battles (07/13/2004): At some point over the next few weeks, the Office of Management and Budget will release the administration's midsession budget review and try to convince everyone the federal deficit is falling. Don't believe them. OMB is likely to say its latest projection shows the fiscal 2004 deficit will be around $420 billion, about $100 billion less than the $521 billion the administration forecast when it released its budget in February. Administration officials will say this is an indication of how much better the budget outlook has gotten over the past few months and that the president's policies are working.... The administration... won't say that the "improvement" is due to what now must be taken as a consistent pattern of questionable projections and forecasts. Last year's midsession review projected a fiscal 2003 deficit of $455 billion. A mere 10 weeks later, when the...

Matthew Yglesias reads the op-ed published under the name "George Schultz" in the New York Times this morning and is an unhappy camper: matthew: Gee...: ...it strikes me as a bit misleading to construct a chart plotting change in GDP versus time and then discuss it as thought it were a chart of GDP versus time. The way Shultz has done it, the second Clinton administration looks like a period of plateau, albeit at a decent level, whereas mapping the second set of data points would reveal that it was, in fact, an era of rapid improvement in living standards. One could go on... Matthew identifies the trick of pretending that a graph of changes is a graph of levels: the graph of detrended levels is too favorable to Clinton, and by graphing changes you can pretend that a slowing of the rate of increase is a decline. But there are two other big problems here--problems that George Shultz's staff should have caught: First, Shultz's graphs show GDP rising throughout the first half of 2001--the first GDP decline in the third quarter of 2001. The first employment declines come in the third and fourth quarters of 2001 depending on the...

When Joshua Bolten, George W. Bush's budget director, tells New York Times reporter David Rosenbaum that: The New York Times: "the improved budget outlook [from last January's forecast] is the direct result of the strong economic growth the president's tax relief has fueled." The natural follow-up question for David Rosenbaum to ask is: But your forecast last January already included the effects on the economy of George W. Bush's tax relief. How can a change in your forecast between then and now be attributed to a factor--tax relief--that was in the forecast then, is in the forecast now, and has not changed? Don't changes in the forecast have to be the result of things that have changed, and not of things that have stayed the same? But David Rosenbaum doesn't ask this natural question--he takes Josh Bolten's quote and leads with it. Why not? David Rosenbaum is clueless about forecasts and the budget, has never bothered to educate himself, and is unqualified to write this story. David Rosenbaum knows that if he does anything other than parrot what Josh Bolten wishes him to parrot he will lose his ability to get administration-quotes-on-deadline, and his editors will be mad at him....

Atrios and Robert Waldmann drop their jaws in amazement as they see Paul Krugman's: The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Triumph of the Trivial: I've been reading 60 days' worth of transcripts from the places four out of five Americans cite as where they usually get their news: the major cable and broadcast TV networks. Never mind the details - I couldn't even find a clear statement that Mr. Kerry wants to roll back recent high-income tax cuts and use the money to cover most of the uninsured. When reports mentioned the Kerry plan at all, it was usually horse race analysis - how it's playing, not what's in it. distorted by the executive producer of "CBS Evening News with Dan Rather" into: Poynter Online - Forums: From JIM MURPHY, executive producer, "CBS Evening News with Dan Rather": The entire staff of the "CBS Evening News with Dan Rather" was pretty miffed after reading Paul Krugman's column today that claimed not a SINGLE issues piece has aired on the big newscasts in the past two months. He must have missed the SIXTEEN different "issues" pieces we did over a four week period during that time, part of...

*Sigh* Gregg Easterbrook trashes physicist Stephen Hawking: The New Republic Online: Expert Tease: So Stephen Hawking now says he was completely wrong about black holes--they don't crush reality out of existence, and they aren't doorways to alternate universes.... It would be tempting to say that Hawking was able to become internationally famous while saying kooky things because today physicists have the status once held by medieval priests: People don't challenge their mumbo-jumbo. Or perhaps Hawking was able to get away with saying kooky things because knowledge of science is so poor: Book critics and the television newscasters who interviewed him assumed the mumbo-jumbo must make sense and felt insecure about simply saying, "Time moving in reverse, what claptrap." For years the science community has been quietly uneasy about Hawking's high profile, since he's gotten away with asserting considerable nonsense and then defending himself by waving equations. At least he has finally confessed, and presumably in the future will be more circumspect. Unless time begins to run backward, in which case he's already been circumspect, but will, as he grows younger, start shooting from the hip.... Goes on to ridicule the Big-Bang theory for violating the "common-sense test": What came before...

Paul Krugman bangs his head against the wall once again: Triumph of the Trivial: Under the headline "Voters Want Specifics From Kerry," The Washington Post recently quoted a voter demanding that John Kerry and John Edwards talk about "what they plan on doing about health care for middle-income or lower-income people. I have to face the fact that I will never be able to have health insurance, the way things are now. And these millionaires don't seem to address that." Mr. Kerry proposes spending $650 billion extending health insurance to lower- and middle-income families. Whether you approve or not, you can't say he hasn't addressed the issue. Why hasn't this voter heard about it? Well, I've been reading 60 days' worth of transcripts from the places four out of five Americans cite as where they usually get their news: the major cable and broadcast TV networks. Never mind the details - I couldn't even find a clear statement that Mr. Kerry wants to roll back recent high-income tax cuts and use the money to cover most of the uninsured. When reports mentioned the Kerry plan at all, it was usually horse race analysis - how it's playing, not what's in...

Busy, Busy, Busy writes about "Sovereign Iraq". If I were Negroponte, I wouldn't do things like this. You've chosen Allawi: now don't jiggle his elbow. But I'm not Negroponte (although I do have as little Arabic as he does): Busy, Busy, Busy: The prime minister of sovereign Iraq was apparently under the misapprehension that that he was the prime minister of a sovereign country when he decided to offer amnesty to Iraqi insurgents in the interest of reconciliation. Worse, in not excluding from his offer insurgents who had attacked Americans, he was behaving as if an Iraqi life was worth no more and no less than an American life. But the American ambassador, a certain John Negroponte, soon disabused him of such notions. From the LA Times: On one point, Ambassador Negroponte was clear: The United States would oppose any effort by the Iraqi interim government to grant amnesty to insurgents who participated in attacks on Americans. Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has said that the government is working on a broad amnesty proposal aimed at those who participated in the insurgency. "I would take exception to that," he said when asked how he would respond if the amnesty extended to...

Dan Froomkin writes about the "drop Cheney" rumors: washingtonpost.com – White House Briefing: Have you ever heard so many people talking about a non-story? Well, I'm not one to buck a trend. I just report about 'em. So here's all the latest about the rumors about Vice President Cheney getting dumped from the ticket. It was a big-time rumor smackdown on the NBC Nightly News, when Tim Russert told Brian Williams last night: "Brian, I have talked to five -- count 'em, five -- senior Bush campaign advisers, and every one of them, starting with Karl Rove on down, said Dick Cheney is on the ticket to stay." Russert said the advisers told him there are lots of reasons: Cheney is an asset to the campaign, an articulate defender of the president, and Bush's conservative base would be livid if he was dropped. Plus, Russert says: "The president is a man who is loyal, a man who is not complicated but consistent, and he would never do this to the closest vice president in history. . . . "I have never heard these advisers more emphatic that Dick Cheney is on the ticket to stay." But Bill Plante reports on...

It's unfair to pick on the Economist's "Lexington" for past misjudgments of the Bush administration. But it is irresistible: Economist.com | Lexington: George Bush, homme sérieux: Feb 8th 2001: ONLY the other day the clever line on George Bush was that he was nothing but a lazy frat boy.... Mr Bush is certainly immune to his predecessor’s obsession with intellectual credentials (indeed, the Clinton White House, all brains, back-stabbing and lechery, was arguably the closest America has ever got to the Sorbonne).... His administration has so far been a model of disciplined efficiency. Every week brings a new White House initiative; every meeting starts and ends on time.... The past 40 years have seen the creation of a new Republican constituency, the conservative intelligentsia... the rise of right-wing think-tanks... the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal... vital role in driving the Republican Party’s successes, persuading it to embrace “unthinkable” ideas such as tax cuts and welfare reform. And Republican presidents who have ignored the intellectual wing of their party—most notably, George Bush senior—have paid dearly. Mr Bush has been careful to balance practical types like his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, with policy wonks. Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser.......

Matt Stoller and Andrew Northrup point us at Ed Cone. Either Sy Hersh has gone completely insane, or the House needs to vote to impeach George W. Bush tonight: EdCone.com:Seymour Hersh says the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher." (I transcribed some of his speech from this streaming site. Hersh starts at about 1:07:50.) He called the prison scene "a series of massive crimes, criminal activity by the president and the vice president, by this administration anyway…war crimes." The outrages have cost us the support of moderate Arabs, says Hersh. "They see us as a sexually perverse society." Hersh describes a Pentagon in crisis... with large sums of cash missing, including something like $1 billion that was supposed to be in Iraq. "The disaffection inside the Pentagon is extremeley acute," Hersh says. He tells the story of an officer telling Rumsfeld how bad things are, and Rummy turning to a ranking general yes-man who reassured him...

Matthew Yglesias asks why we don't have true headlines and leads, like "President Defends Iraq War by Making S*** Up": matthew: Bush Hatin': Why do I hate George W. Bush? Let me count the ways. Or, rather, let me just count one. In response to the SSCI Report which clearly establishes that the reasons the president gave us for going to war involved several key factual claims that turn out to be false, the president had two viable options. One would be to concede that the reason offered (a direct, short-term military threat posed by Iraq) reflected the imperatives of Security Council politics rather than the administration's real thinking and instead offer up one of the two dozen or so "right reasons" for war that various pundits have offered over the past several years. Another would be to say that the stated reason was the real reason and that the factual judgments underlying it were reasonable ex ante, though ex post we can see that they were wrong. This is the William F. Buckley position: "if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have supported that." Instead of picking one of these two alternatives, however, the president (once...

Michael Isikoff shows off his considerable journalistic skills once more: MSNBC - 'The Dots Never Existed': Colin Powell was putting the finishing touches on his speech to the United Nations spelling out the case for war in Iraq. Across the Potomac River, a Pentagon intelligence analyst going over the facts in the speech was alarmed at how shaky that case was. Powell's presentation relied heavily on the claims of one especially dubious Iraqi defector, dubbed "Curve Ball" inside the intel community. A self-proclaimed chemical engineer who was the brother of a top aide to Iraqi National Congress chief Ahmad Chalabi, Curve Ball had told the German intelligence service that Iraq had a fleet of seven mobile labs used to manufacture deadly biological weapons. But nobody inside the U.S. government had ever actually spoken to the informant—except the Pentagon analyst, who concluded the man was an alcoholic and utterly useless as a source. He recalled that Curve Ball had shown up for their only meeting nursing a "terrible hangover." After reading Powell's speech, the analyst decided he had to speak up, according to a devastating report from the Senate intelligence committee, released last week, on intelligence failures leading up to the...

Robert Waldmann reads the New York Times before I do, and learns that Iraq was on the menu as early as September 20, 2001--which is, of course, what Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke said, and what the Bushies vehemently denied: Robert's random thoughts: Muhammad Al-Zubaidi... INC efforts to pump up stories about Iraqi WMD and alleged ties to al Qaeda.... not a very credible source.... The bit in the NYT article which I found most interesting, has nothing to do with Al-Zubaidi: On Sept. 20, 2001, with the Pentagon hallways still reeking of smoke and disaster, Mr. Chalabi met with the Defense Policy Board, a group of private citizens that advises the secretary of defense. The clear consensus was that Mr. Hussein had to be removed from power in Iraq, in the interests of stabilizing the region and thwarting his support for terrorists, according to Mr. Brooke, who accompanied Mr. Chalabi to the Pentagon. So, over at the Pentagon, minds were made up by September 20 2001. This is obviously true, but had been denied when Clarke made the claim. Notice the odd attitude towards evidence. It is not that they are trying to decide what to do, so they...

The most remarkable thing about presidential approval polls is the ten-point spread among different polls. You'd think the pollsters would have figured out by now whose methodology is biased. You'd think reporters would by now have learned to say that poll X is "usually 4 points below the average poll." But they haven't:...

Joshua Micah Marshall is unhappy with the Washington Post's Susan Schmidt: Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: July 04, 2004 - July 10, 2004 Archives: I'll dispense with the literary prologue and get right to the point. Susan Schmidt is known, happily among DC Republicans and not so happily among DC Democrats, as what you might call the "Mikey" (a la Life Cereal fame) of the DC press corps, especially when the cereal is coming from Republican staffers. This morning she has an article on the Senate intel report and Joe Wilson, specifically focusing on the relevance of Wilson's reporting on Niger (the report says analysts did not see Wilson's findings as weakening claims that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from Niger) and his wife's role in recommending him for the assignment. We'll discuss the broader issues of Plame's role in Wilson's assignment and the underlying question of the alleged Iraq-Niger negotiations. A clearer-eyed take on Wilson and report can be found here in this story by Knight Ridder. But for now a few points on Schmidt's treatment. In her fourth paragraph Schmidt writes that "contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did...

James Di Benedetto endangers his health by reading the Washington Post's Tom Toles: The Eleven Day Empire: There Ought to Be A Law...: Or at least an unwritten rule, that any journalist, opinion writer or public figure who utters the phrase "Fidel Castro has outlasted (x number of) U.S. Presidents" will be banned from all public discourse for, say, a year. For the first offense. I'm sorry, but that's one of those cliches that really bugs me, and it's used this morning in the WashPost... a smiling Fidel saying: "Our policy is simple. It stays. I stay. U.S. Presidents always go." Yes, they do, Mr. Toles, because, in case you've forgotten, U.S. Presidents are, by the Constitution, prohibited from serving more than eight years as President. We've had 10 Presidential elections since Castro took power and installed himself as President for life. It just isn't all that clever to say that good old Fidel has outlasted American leaders; it's about as clever as saying that you've outlived your last dozen goldfish......

Timothy Noah has fallen in love with Barbara Ehrenreich: Chatterbox: ...Barbara Ehrenreich has established herself as the Times's best columnist. This is, of course, a snap judgment, but Ehrenreich has long been one of the most eloquent voices on the left, which, as distinct from liberalism, has not had much access to the mainstream press for many years. The Bush administration has revitalized the left, making it necessary for the rest of us—liberals like Chatterbox as well as conservatives—to keep abreast of what it's saying.... The Times op-ed page desperately needs her mature voice, her sharp mind, and the challenge her ideas pose to the common wisdom... I say, "God, no!" and "PUH-LEEZE!!" It may be because Barbara Ehrenreich is a typical voice of the American left that it will in all probability be a waste of ink and paper to put her on the Times op-ed page, but a waste of ink and paper it will most likely be. I agree that Barbara Ehrenreich is a very smart and graceful writer, a keen analyst of American culture and society--she is worth, say, ten of David Brooks. But her brand of left-wing politics is an infantile disorder. Left-wing politics is,...

Erin Waters, from the office of the publisher of the National Journal, writes me an email: From: Erin Waters ext@njp.omessage.com To: delong@econ.Berkeley.EDU Subject: National Journal access Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 09:00:00 -0500 Reply-To: ewaters@nationaljournal.com X-MailSessionID: zc9HkYZWq07.JiHM8uSC0HZrrYAAAZU6AAAAbAE= Status: Dear Brad, Over the next several weeks, you will receive complimentary issues of National Journal, the leading weekly on politics, policy and government. I'm sending them to you because I thought you would find them valuable to your work. There is no obligation and you will not receive a bill. You'll receive a total of five free issues and access to our subscribers-only Web site.... I've also included a http://njp.omessage.com/lrd0_AAGVOgAAAGwB fact sheet, which provides more detail on National Journal and its features. Please let me know if you have any questions about this complimentary trial. Regards, Erin Waters Office of the Publisher Erin Waters National Journal Group 600 New Hampshire Ave, NW Washington DC 20037 Ph: 202-266-7052 My reaction: I will not subscribe, I will not pay a cent to the National Journal until all connections between the magazine and Stuart Taylor, Jr., have been severed. Sometimes when you "feign suffocation"--i.e., make people think they are going to drown--they actually do drown,...

Courtesy of the Poor Man and Oliver Willis, 3 1/2 years ago American politician George W. Bush praised African-American poet Langston Hughes. Now Andrew Sullivan attacks American politicians who praise Hughes as dirty Communist sympathizers. I think that Sullivan has crossed the line. We really do need a much better press corps: George W. Bush: When we examine our Nation's history, we discover these and countless other stories that inspire us. They are stories of the triumph of the human spirit, tragic stories of cruelty rooted in ignorance and bigotry, yet stories of everyday people rising above their circumstances and the prejudice of others to build lives of dignity. This month, and throughout the year, let us celebrate and remember these stories, which reflect the history of African Americans and all Americans. We can all enjoy the works of writers like Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes. Now Andrew Sullivan tells us exactly what he thinks of American politicians--like George W. Bush--who praise Langston Hughes: www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish: Wouldn't it be helpful to read the Langston Hughes poem? Here it is in full. It is indeed beautiful and lyrical if a little trite...

Virginia Postrel writes about writing about productivity: Dynamist Blog: THE BIG (ECONOMIC) STORY: I look at one piece of that very big story: the spreading use of operations research techniques once confined to theory. (What's operations research? The story explains that too, or tries to without using any math, graphs, or jargon about optimizing subject to constraints or finding interior solutions. For more on the field, see the INFORMS site.) Of course, very few general-interest publications would let a writer spend nearly 2,000 words writing about operations research--or, for that matter, rising productivity. Brad is exactly right that journalists aren't covering this story, but he doesn't offer any reasons why. As a journalist, let me suggest a few: 1) The productivity story is boring. It isn't really, but editors think it is. There's no obvious conflict, no scandal, no little guy getting hurt (unless you portray rising productivity as throwing people out of work, which is the most common angle). The improvements that drive productivity increases are incremental--hence, not dramatic--and often technical. 2) The productivity story isn't political. Neither George Bush nor Bill Clinton deserves any credit, except for not getting in the way. Not getting in the way is...

A bunch of correspondents have said that I should read Andrew Sullivan's denunciation of Bush Republicanism: www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish: BUSH REPUBLICANS: Kate O'Beirne has an interesting follow-up to her previous complaint about the lack of "Bush Republicans" in the New York Convention line-up. But what is a "Bush Republican"? I think it has to be a combination of the social policy of the religious right (the FMA, bans on embryo research, government support for religious charities, etc), the fiscal policy of the Keynesian left (massive new domestic spending combined with "deficits don't matter"), and the foreign policy of liberal moralism (democratization as a policy in the Middle East). So it's not surprising, is it, that there aren't many principled "Bush Republicans." Again, the GOP crib sheet on Edwards is interesting in this respect. He gets zinged, for example, for opposing the new Medicare entitlement. So how many Republicans positively believe in creating a new and fantastically expensive entitlement for the wealthiest segment in American society? I don't mean defensively explain it as unavoidable. I mean positively endorse it as an element in their conservative philosophy. The sad truth is that if Bush Republicanism exists, it's one of the most...

David Corn runs into Grover Norquist, and is able to check out some Norquist-quality facts firsthand: Capital Games: When we were just on [the Diane Rehm Show], I said to [President] Clinton, [Grover] Norquist claimed that you supported Bush's invasion because you were concerned about Saddam Hussein's WMDs. Is that true? The moment was reminiscent of that scene in Woody Allen's Annie Hall when Allen is standing on line inside a movie theater lobby and listening to some blowhard in front of him expounding on the theories of real-life media critic Marhsall McLuhan. Allen then produces McLuhan from behind a movie poster, and McLuhan tells the man on line, "You know nothing of my work." After that Allen says to the camera, "Boy, if life were only like this!" With Norquist squeezed next to him, Clinton said that had not been his position. He acknowledged that he had endorsed the congressional resolution granting Bush the authority to wage war. But, he explained, that was because he had figured Hussein would not have permitted weapons inspectors to return to Iraq without the threat of force. "Hans Blix [the chief weapons inspector] was tough," Clinton said, adding that he had wanted...

If Max Sawicky doesn't stop reading the Washington Post, he risks severe health status consequences: MaxSpeak, You Listen!: SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON POST: Think tanks in Washington produce substantive reports with diverse political views. But few studies are honored by a full article in the Washington Post. By contrast, today a report utterly bereft of underlying documentation or rationale is one of those exceptions. Today we are informed is "Cost of Government Day," a canard cooked up by our old friend Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform (sic). Today is supposed to be the day that income earned by "the average American" begins to outstrip the costs of taxes and regulations. This fake study.... Nowhere in the paper is the calculation of anything explained or sourced. Nowhere in the Post article is any dissenting voice cited. It might as well be an ATR press release. It is not quite that bad. The reporter, Christopher Lee, makes one--one--one--single parenthetical (and by that I mean that it is contained in parentheses) criticism of ATR. But it is almost that bad. Max is right: it is a rewritten ATR press release. I wonder at what point Christopher Lee realized that for him...

Joshua Micah Marshall uses sarcasm as he contemplates the latest work by New York Times reporter James Risen--a work cooked up from 100% peddled self-interested government leaks without any application on the reporter's part of common sense, or any inclusion of context or mention of critical and dissenting voices. Truly an opportunity for him--and all of us--to bang our heads against the wall: A remarkable turn of events. We know that the chief architects of the war -- at the White House and the Pentagon -- waged a running battle with the CIA for the eighteen months leading up to the war, both on the WMD front and on their too-skeptical take on Iraq's ties to al Qaida. It was the Intelligence Community that was the proverbial stick in the mud holding up the aggressive posture favored by these other forces within the administration. But it now turns out that while the White House claimed the CIA was too cautious and naive about the dangers emanating from Iraq, in fact, the Agency was hoodwinking the president into believing the worst about Iraq and keeping him and his advisors in the dark about the weakness of their claims. You might...

A normal person, reading Jonathan Weisman in the Washington Post on June 8, would conclude (i) that Steven Moore is an economist, and (ii) that Kevin Hassett, Eric Engen, Glenn Hubbard, Greg Mankiw, and many other economists are "reevaluating" the view that budget deficits are a significant minus for the economy, believe that "the argument against deficits is more about self-righteous moralism than economics," and broadly agree with Richard Cheney's declaration that "deficits don't matter": Economic Legacy: Reagan Policies Gave Green Light to Red Ink : The line is not likely to make this week's eulogies to Ronald Reagan, but when Vice President Cheney allegedly declared, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he summed up an enduring argument from the former president's economic legacy.... It wasn't that Reagan's policies proved that government borrowing had no impact on the economy. But his administration's record -- particularly with some years of hindsight -- did give reason to question traditional thinking.... "The lesson we should have learned [from those years] is that deficits have little or no short-term economic impacts," said William A. Niskanen, a member of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers.... [Deficits] appeared to have no impact politically, said Stephen Moore, a conservative...

Eric Umansky is a very good American journalist. Eric Umansky praises Nir Rosen's reporting from Fallujah: Eric Umansky: Peeling Back the Picture in Fallujah: Rosen's piece seems to get far more details on the make-up of the guerrillas than anything else I've seen--including say, the NYT magazine's recent, lengthy story. The reporter for that piece doesn't speak Arabic and as an obviously western guy had very limited access. Rosen by contrast speaks the language and was able to hide his American identity. (He convinced the insurgents that he was Bosnian.) That's not to bludgeon the Times. It's partially about my own doubts. I've done the same thing: Gone places where I don't speak the language, don't have in-depth knowledge of the culture, and then written long, seemingly knowing pieces. I think that story I did accurately portrays the situation I covered. But am I 100 percent sure? No. There's always a tension between trying to convey as much information as possible, molding it into some kind of understandable narrative, and just writing just what you know. And it's worth remembering that when you're in a strange place where you don't speak the language, what you know probably isn't all that...

Andrew Northrup reads Nicholas Kristof, and his head explodes: The Poor Man: He's Not A Liar, He's My President!: Nicolas Kristof is sick and tired of people calling the President a liar. And he's got lots of arguments about why this is a terrible thing to do: I'm against the "liar" label for two reasons. First, it further polarizes the political cesspool, and this polarization is making America increasingly difficult to govern. Second, insults and rage impede understanding. Indeed. It is wrong to call the President a liar, because that's a bad word. Liberals should think of a nicer way of couching their criticism. Kristoff gives an example: In fact, of course, Mr. Bush did stretch the truth. The run-up to Iraq was all about exaggerations, but not flat-out lies. Indeed, there's some evidence that Mr. Bush carefully avoids the most blatant lies — witness his meticulous descriptions of the periods in which he did not use illegal drugs. See? The President doesn't lie, he only exaggerates, maybe stretches the truth on occassion, possibly says things in such a way as to deliberately leave the listener with the wrong impression. Indeed, there's some evidence that Mr. Bush carefully avoids the...

Andrew Sullivan on Hillary Rodham Clinton: www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish: THE ESSENCE OF TODAY'S LIBERALISM: "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." The "we", of course, are the Clintons. They know far better than you do how you should spend your money. Because they are morally better people than you are. In this case, "the common good" means "bringing the government's resources back into balance with its expenditures"--what we used to call a "fiscal conservative" stance. Bringing the government's resources back into balance with its expenditures is something that every serious student of America's political economy favors. It's odd. People who were in Lowell House in the 1980s claim that back then Andrew Sullivan was... thoughtful... smart....

At CJR's Campaign Desk, Liz Cox Barrett tears America's political airheaded gossipmongers press into shreds and gobbets, and then eats the gobbets: CJR Campaign Desk: Archives: Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was a senator named John who found himself on Al Gore's short list of potential running mates. The campaign press... was entranced.... It tumbled all over itself to describe John as the perfect match for what it saw as the somewhat wooden, robot-like Gore. One newspaper described John as a man with "an easy manner and good looks," a politician whose "charisma [might] rub off on [Gore]," a person who could "bring some charm to the ticket." John's selection, it opined, would signal that Gore "thinks the election will be decided on personality"... "charismatic"... "younger and more telegenic than Dick Cheney"... "handsome," with "a record tailor-made to undermine the standard Republican attack on liberal Democrats." This John's surname was Kerry.... What a difference 1,460 days make. The "handsome," "charismatic" candidate who four years ago had an "easy manner," "charm," and a record impregnable to Republican attack has undergone a hideous transmogrification.... No longer handsome, Kerry... "The Addams Family"'s heavy-browed Lurch... a "long-faced Easter Island...

Crossing my desk this morning. We really do need a much better press corps. All I can say is that we must all have been very, very, very bad in a previous life to have to suffer this in our current one... It is, however, at one level, quite funny: Sadly, No! takes a look at David Frum's analysis of the Canadian economy: David Frum: Between 1993 and 2003, Canada’s total gross domestic product – the value of all Canadian-made goods and Canadian-provided services – rose by two-thirds. [...] Where did that extra production go? That’s the question answered by the second number, 45%. The lion’s share of Canadian economic growth in the 1990s was pocketed by government, especially the federal government. Between 1993 and 2003, federal revenues rose by 45%, or almost $60 billion.... And Sadly, No! calls for backup. Sadly, No! criticizes Frum by performing a reducto ad absurdum, pointing out that Frum's "methodology" could be applied to critique the Reagan years in the United States as a time when big government grabbed the "lion's share" of growth for itself. Let me take on the swamp of misinformation here in the pages of National Review more directly. Let's...

Matthew Yglesias is worried and upset that in his business shrillness and sloppiness are key elements of virtu--that is, that they are key means to prominence, influence, and authority: The Dialectic of Inaccuracy: ...we have a systemic bias in our media culture that rewards people who make over-the-top and/or inaccurate attacks on their political opponents. To take myself as an example, early on during my Prospect career I came across a Rich Lowry article on NRO unfairly castigating Bill Clinton's anti-terror policies. I responded with a Tapped post that, among other things, noted that if anyone was ignoring terrorism in the 1990s, it was The National Review. Normally, things would have just ended there. Fortunately for me, however, the post contained a factual error that, while not crucial to the argument, was a really clear case of error. As a result, Lowry had a good hook to write a column in response to my post, noting the error and suggesting that the argument as a whole was every bit as slipshod as the one assertion. I then wrote a counter-response column, apologizing for the error, noting some problems with Lowry's argument, and making the (entirely correct) case that my point...

I've been trying to think about why so much of America's elite press corps is so flawed--does such a lousy and incompetent job so much of the time. I don't have answers. I do have observations and, perhaps, a theory or two. Consider the passage below from the Washington Post. It's one of a hundred or so examples I've filed away over the past year or so--examples of egregiously bad political-economic reporting from elite journalistic institutions. It's not the worst such example, but it is selected from a set of howlers. The reporter (Jonathan Weisman) is not the worst example, but I certainly wouldn't employ him to cover American economics and politics. But structural patterns and pressures are more important here than individuals, and I want to focus on them. Let's roll the tape: Economy Provides No Boost For Bush: The nation's economy is growing smartly, wages have begun to rise, and employers have added more than 1.4 million jobs to their payrolls in the past nine months. Yet voters continue to give President Bush poor ratings on his handling of the economy.... [...] Bush is not the first president to suffer from a disconnect between objective economic indicators and...

Writing for the National Journal, Stan Collender muses on the disappearance of the Bush economic and budget team: BUDGET BATTLES: The Incredible Disappearing Bush Budget Team By Stan Collender NationalJournal.com Tuesday, June 22, 2004 Has anyone seen or heard from the Bush administration’s economic and budget team?... National Economic Council Chairman Stephen Friedman has been practically invisible.... Greg Mankiw.... hasn’t been heard from since he made a politically incorrect statement back in February about... outsourcing.... Joshua Bolten... has been one of the least visible OMB directors.... John Snow... seems to be perceived more as a cheerleader than as a policymaker.... Dick Cheney... has serious overall credibility problems.... Republican budget and economic policy makers on Capital Hill are also poorly positioned.... [T]he increasing likelihood that there won’t be a budget resolution this year will force them first to defend what they did—or didn’t do—on the budget this year, severely limiting their ability to defend other things... like Bush policies.... All of this presents the White House with a huge problem... no one within or even near the administration has the standing or credibility to defend and promote the Bush budget and economic records other than the president himself. The problem is...

Tim Dunlop watches the self-parody edition of the Today Show, and then bangs his head against the wall: the road to surfdom: The breathtaking stupidity of the mainstream media. Argghh. Just watched an entire segment on the Today show discussing why John Kerry wasn't currently getting much media coverage. Yes, folks. Apparently serious journalists spent an entire segment talking about why apparently serious journalists aren't talking about John Kerry. The idea that they might do a story on, say, John Kerry's health policy instead of spending their time talking about how no-one is talking about John Kerry's health policy (or whatever) doesn't seem to have occured to them. And of course, they knew who to blame for this peculiar state of affairs. Why, it was the media, who are too busy covering Reagan's death and Clinton's book. Well, at least they cleared that up. Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

Matthew Yglesias climbs to the mountain peak and gazes out in wild surmise at the ocean of stupidity that is National Review's economics coverage: Matthew Yglesias: June 20, 2004 - June 26, 2004 Archives:A Novel Theory: "How To Abuse Accounting Identities," by Tom Nugent of The National Review: What the senators and media don't get is the basic equation that defines the role of government deficits in the economy: The federal government deficit = non-government savings (of net financial assets). That's fact, not theory, a.k.a. an "accounting identity." Non-government savings include that of both residents of the U.S. and foreigners. If the federal budget deficit of $450 billion about equals the current account deficit, it means that all the net financial assets added by the deficit are being saved by foreigners, who desire to hold all those dollar-denominated U.S. financial assets and are willing to net export to us in order to get them. This data indicates is that the federal deficit is too small for the U.S. domestic sector to save anything! Domestic savings are low because the budget deficit is too low. Low and unobtainable savings means low demand, excess capacity, and low levels of employment. In other...

Can anyone tell me why Richard Cohen still has a job at the Washington Post? He appears to know nothing of history--not even the history he lived through: Grand 'Oprah,' Poor History (washingtonpost.com): To a large extent, Ulysses S. Grant's presidency was rehabilitated by his memoirs, written as the Civil War general was dying of cancer. Richard Nixon, virtually banished from Washington, wrote book after book from his exurban Elba in New Jersey. Watergate haunted him, as it should have, but slowly we came to realize that he possessed a first-class mind, keenly analytical, occasionally wise. No one could say that Nixon did not have gravitas. Rehabilitate Grant's presidency? Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant told the story of Grant the general and rehabilitated the reputation of Grant the man. It did nothing to rehabilitate Grant's presidency. Richard Nixon? Gravitas? From his early claims that Helen Gahagan Douglas did the will of the Kremlin and denunciations of "Dean Acheson's cowardly college of communist containment" (meaning "let's start World War III right now!"); through his commands to H.R. Haldeman to bomb the Brookings Institution and plant evidence that the left had done it; up to his last hysterical intervention in U.S. politics:...

Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry reviews Clinton's My Life for the New York Times Book Review. He likes it. No sneering at it for being a "pastiche" of a life written by a guy boring enough to watch the inauguration of the President of Nigeria here. No complaints about forced marches through arid policy debates here. McMurtry calls the book what it is: "[N]o other book tells us as vividly or fully what it is like to be president of the United States for eight years. Clinton had the good sense to couple great smarts with a solid education; he arrived in Washington in 1964 and has been the nation's - or perhaps the world's - No. 1 politics junkie ever since. And he can write - as Reagan, Ford, Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson, to go no farther back, could not. "[...] "If Bill Clinton had been a prime minister rather than a president this book would have been in two volumes, if not three, and thus not quite such a wrestle. But if he had been a prime minister rather than a president no one would have paid him the reported $10 million for it, however well he...

The very sharp and usually incisive Jake Schlesinger fails to distinguish between levels and rates of change: WASHINGTON -- With the economy now growing at a rapid clip, and employers finally hiring again in industrial Midwest battleground states, Democrats are losing a pillar of their 2004 campaign argument: that a weak recovery is making it unusually hard for Americans to find work... That the labor market is finally improving--that it is no longer becoming harder and harder month by month to find jobs--does not mean that the labor market is good. A few months of employment gains are good news: they mean that it is a little less bad out there in the labor market than it used to be. But don't confuse rates of change with levels: there are still perhaps 4 million people either unemployed or out of the labor force who would have jobs if we had a labor market in equilibrium. (And there are 6 million who would have jobs if we were in a boom like the late 1990s.) It's still unusually hard for Americans to find work--just not as unusually hard as it was six months ago. But I already said this yesterday:...

Eugene Volokh reads Will Saletan's "Kerryisms" and has a "Huh?" moment: The Volokh Conspiracy - Archives 2004-06-15 - 2004-06-21: Huh? Kerry was asked: Is the support for Roe v. Wade a critical point, a litmus test, for any court appointee you would make? Kerry answered: To the Supreme Court of the United States, yes. The Kerryism edited version, which I assume is supposed to be equivalent to Kerryism's original point but better put (remember their original charter, which is "translat[ing]" Kerry's words "into plain English," by removing "caveats and pointless embellishments") is: Yes. But that's not what Kerry wanted to say! It would be a stupid thing to say, both from a policy perspective (even if he firmly supports constitutional abortion rights, why should he turn it into a litmus test for district court judges?) and from a political perspective (if he does set up such a broad litmus test even for district court judges, he'd look like a fanatic). What exactly is the point of the Kerryisms? At first, I thought -- based on the column's introductory installment -- the Kerryisms were meant to show that Kerry throws in lots of unnecessary verbiage. But here, this was a necessary...

The Washington Post has retracted its false claim that John Kerry was wrong to say that real wages are falling: MaxSpeak, You Listen!: From the print edition of the Washington Post: CORRECTION: On June 19 we wrote that wage increases had kept pace with inflation in the year to May, and criticized Sen. John F. Kerry for suggesting that wages had fallen behind. We were wrong and Mr. Kerry was right: Hourly wages for non-supervisory workers rose 2.2 percent, while the consumer price index rose 3.1 percent. Perhaps we can take a step further forward, and get corrections of some of the analytical (rather than merely the arithmetic) blunders in the Post's editorial? Jobs and Mr. Kerry (washingtonpost.com): ...job creation, which appeared surprisingly weak a few months ago despite strong economic growth, is now healthy -- and statistical revisions suggest that it was robust as far back as March and respectable in January... [...] If Mr. Kerry's message seems exaggerated now, it will seem even less convincing soon. Job markets recover in three phases: As the economy picks up, employers ask workers to put in extra hours; when they've exhausted that option, they hire new workers; when new workers become...

Eric Alterman is unhappy with Newsweek's coverage of Bill Clinton's book: MSNBC - Altercation: Media Self Parody:  Newsweek (having lost out to Time for the Clinton interview) assigns to review the book .. Michael Isikoff!  He complains that Clinton "forces the reader on a joyless march through arid policy debates." "Arid." Yep. That's Michael Isikoff. Actually talking about what the government does, and how what the government does affects the real lives of real people--that's BORING! And Clinton is a weenie for making people like Isikoff read about it....

Kevin Drum watches Arnold Schwarzenegger snooker the LA Times: The Washington Monthly: SMOKE AND MIRRORS....I was all ready to give Arnold some props when I read this story in the LA Times tonight: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today signed new gambling compacts with representatives of five Indian tribes, securing a $1-billion payment to the state this year, helping to close the coming year's fiscal budget gap. A billion dollars. Not bad! That's a little less than he talked about during the campaign, but more than he projected in his preliminary budget in January. But then I read this: The $1-billion payment to the state will be financed by a bond repaid over 18 years. Upon repayment of the bond, the tribes will then make annual payments to the state until 2030, when the compact expires. So it turns out that Arnold didn't negotiate a deal get an additional billion dollars a year from the tribes. He didn't negotiate a deal to get half a billion dollars from the tribes. He caved in and negotiated a deal to get a lousy $40 million a year from the tribes, less than 5% of what he claimed he could get during the campaign. And...

Why not get somebody to work on the Washington Post editorial page who faintly knows what he or she is doing? Billmon bangs his head against the wall as he contemplates the situation: Whiskey Bar: Dumb as a Post: When I was covering economics, the Washington Post was famous for having exactly one reporter who knew something about the beat (John Berry, now of Bloomberg News) amid a sea of economic ignorance spread throughout the rest of the newsroom. Now it just has the sea. An old financial journalism colleague of mine points out this claim from a June 19 Kerry-bashing Post editorial: Jobs and Mr. Kerry: Now comes the next round of political gloom-mongering. Sen. John F. Kerry, the victor in the Democratic primaries, has been telling voters this week that although job creation may have recovered, wages are the real problem. "In the last year, wages have gone down, and prices have gone up," the candidate told an audience on Tuesday. Actually, hourly wages for non-supervisory workers have risen this year by 2.2 percent as of May, so they kept pace with consumer price inflation. "What the hell is the matter with these guys?" my friend asks. Well,...

This time it is Reading A1 that bangs its head against the wall at the spectacle of New York Times reporter Richard Stevenson once again being Reading A1: ..."too craven, and too lazy, to oppose Administration spin today with facts drawn from the record.  This is true in several places in the article, nowhere more embarrassingly than in the matter of the much-debunked fable of a Prague meeting between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence... Mr. Cheney said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that the administration had never been able to prove the meeting took place but was not able to disprove it either. "We just don't know," Mr. Cheney said. Leave aside Cheney's transparent intellectual dishonesty, which turns the impossibility of absolutely proving a negative into a practical affirmation of the positive.  (Rhetorical notions, like plausibility, or degrees of proof, have no place in Cheney's Platonic la-la land.)  As nearly complete disproof of the Prague story as possible (to convince reasonable people) has, in fact, already been offered in the commission staff report—as noted by, among others, the NY Times' own James Risen earlier this week: The report cited a photograph taken by a bank surveillance...

Matthew Yglesias reads Washington Post columnist Fred Hiatt, and bangs his head against the wall: Matthew Yglesias: June 20, 2004 - June 26, 2004 Archives: Hiatt buys a little spin: This is the irony of Bremer's legacy. A ruthlessly methodical executive, he set numerical goals for himself more than a year ago and mostly met them: electricity restored, schools rebuilt, provincial councils formed. Yet he can barely travel in Baghdad. Polls show that he and his occupation are reviled, and Iraqis who cooperate with Americans are less safe than ever. It's far from clear that Bremer's "building blocks" will survive. They haven't met the electricity generation goals set 12 months ago -- they're not even close. Nor have they met the oil production goals, the telephone landline goals, the security training goals or, as far as I can tell, any of Bremer's numerical goals. But whatever. Matthew is right: In this case--as in many others--the amount of information conveyed by the Post would be increased if this column of Hiatt's were simply replaced by white space, or by another Nordstrom's ad....

Ah. The Economist issues a correction: Economist.com: Last week (“Cursed by lagging perceptions”) we suggested that the current pace of job growth (an average of 238,000 new jobs per month this year) meant that a forecast published in February by George Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, which suggested 2.6m new jobs would be created in 2004, might prove too low. In fact, the CEA'S forecasts were based on calendar-year averages, not year-end figures, and their calculations actually implied the creation of more than 320,000 new jobs per month during 2004. 320,000 per month is 3.8 million over the calendar year. The Wall Street Journal, however, has not yet corrected its June 8 observation that "readers may recall that chief White House economist Greg Mankiw was widely ridiculed in February for predicting that the economy would create 2.6 million new jobs this year." And I don't believe that the Wall Street Journal ever will....

Joel Achenbach, Washington Post staff writer, badly needs to review the differences between "president", "king", and "high priest": washingtonpost.com: On 9/11, a Telling Seven-Minute Silence: However it is interpreted, it points out a basic truth about any president: He's both an executive and a symbolic figure. He's the spiritual leader of the nation as well as the head of state. He's monarch and prime minister. [...] But even the harshest critics concede that the nation's spiritual leader rallied in the days thereafter......

Another interesting juxtaposition. The Washington Post editorial staff writes: An Iraq Sideshow (washingtonpost.com): ...showing a peculiar instinct for the capillaries rather than the jugular, part of the public debate immediately focused on a single passing point that is no kind of revelation at all: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." Administration foes seized on this sentence to claim that Vice President Cheney has been lying... about a purported relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. The accusation is nearly as irresponsible as the Bush administration's rhetoric has been.... Nor, in fact, did the commission yesterday contradict what Mr. Cheney actually said -- and President Bush backed up -- earlier this week: that there were "long-established ties" between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.... [T]he commission has not denied that there were contacts over a protracted period... But Dan Froomkin says: washingtonpost.com – White House Briefing: today's prize may belong to Mimi Hall of USA Today, who simply reminds her reader: "In a letter to Congress on March 19, 2003 -- the day the war in Iraq began -- Bush said that the war was permitted under legislation authorizing force...

Anatol tells us that the Los Angeles Times's op-ed page is way behind the curve in its attacks on "secular thought" as a religion. The definitive such attack was made by Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin: "Math is not a science. It's a religion. Here is a bunch of numbers, and by some magic they become another bunch of numbers. You either believe it, or you don't. As a math atheist, I demand being freed of this". Hobbes: "In public school, no less. Call a lawyer"...

On February 26, 2003, Daniel Davies wrote: D-squared Digest -- A fat young man without a good word for anyone: I find myself with a few spare minutes and make the mistake of reading Thomas Friedman again. His conclusion after a long, dull and witless ramble... reads "If [it is] done right, the Middle East will never be the same. If done wrong, the world will never be the same". There's not much you can say to that except "shut up you silly man". But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone... give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics: It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration. It was significant enough in scale that I'd have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it). It wasn't in some important way completely f***** up during the execution. On June 17, 2004, New Republic editor Peter Beinart writes: The New Republic Online: Partisan Review I tried hard not to be partisan. I distrusted the Bush administration and feared it would be politically empowered by the war. But such thoughts felt petty and limited at such...

Kevin Drum is alarmed: The Washington Monthly: LA TIMES EDITORIAL PAGE....I missed this op-ed by David Klinghoffer in the LA Times this morning, but Matt Yglesias is right: it is the most abjectly puerile thing I've read on a major editorial page in a long time. Did they really publish a guy who claims, "There is a secular creation account — evolution through random mutation and natural selection, a just-so story increasingly challenged by scientists"? So, we have both Barone and Klinghoffer in the Times today peddling junior high school essays as adult opinion. And I'd like to note that today is June 17th, the third day of Michael Kinsley's reign as editorial and opinion editor. I'm going to be as charitable as possible and assume that he's clearing out the slush pile while still trying to get his arms around things, because the only other interpretation is that he actually thought these were both worthwhile contributions to the public discourse. And I really, really don't want to believe that....

"Dad! The phone is for you!" "Who is it?" [Silence] "He says his name is [redacted]." "No last name?" "No last name?" "Hello?" "Hello, Professor DeLong. I guess I got your name from [redacted] at Berkeley. I'm [redacted] [redacted] from [redacted] magazin e. Were doing a story on the performance of the economy under the different post-World War II presidents, and..." "Now presidents don't control the economy. They influence it. And their policies influence the economy not just while they are in office but afterwards as well." "That's very true. What we are looking for is..." "Now there are two kinds of stories you could be writing. The positive one would be to start by saying that presidents influence but do not control the economy--that most of what happens is the economy following its own path. It would go on to say that presidential policies do influence the economy, to lay out how policies influence the economy, and to evaluate presidents' economic policies. The negative one--the actual subtraction from the American people's knowledge--would be to throw together some simplistic indicators of presidential economic performance over which presidents have little or no control, and rank presidents by those indicators. Which are...

An interesting juxtaposition. Dan Froomkin writes: washingtonpost.com – White House Briefing: President Bush yesterday pointed to Abu Musab Zarqawi as the "best evidence" of a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.... [H]e... [put] himself at odds with the Sept. 11 commission and the intelligence community.... Communications between Zarqawi and al Qaeda that Bush alluded to yesterday took place several months after Hussein was removed from power. And a new report released this morning by the Sept. 11 commission declares that there is "no credible evidence" that Hussein's government collaborated with the al Qaeda terrorist network on any attacks on the United States, including the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings.... "Before the war, intelligence officials said, Zarqawi was operating with the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group Ansar Al Islam in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, not in territory under the control of Hussein's regime...." Dana Milbank writes in today's Washington Post that Bush "renewed an assertion that Hussein had longstanding ties to the al Qaeda terrorist network, one of the justifications underpinning the Iraq war. The alleged link between Hussein and al Qaeda has taken on more importance with the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.... Vice President Cheney... said in a speech...

*Sigh*. More cleaning up after the elephants. More American Enterprise Institute-quality research. Tyler Cowen--who certainly knows better--and Daniel Drezner--who ought by now have learned better--links to a "study" from the American Enterprise Institute that says: Ronald Reagan sought--and won--more spending cuts than any other modern president. He is the only president in the last forty years to cut inflation-adjusted nondefense outlays, which fell by 9.7 percent during his first term. George W. Bush, in contrast, increased real nondefense spending by at least 25.3 percent during his first term.... President Reagan believed that the federal government had usurped private, state, and local responsibilities and consequently thought the budgets of most departments and agencies should be cut. Following are comparisons of budget cuts during each presidential term going back to the Johnson administration: President Reagan cut the budget of 8 agencies out of 15 during his first term and the budget of 10 out of 15 during his second term. President Clinton cut the budget of 9 out of 15 agencies during his first term but cut none during his second term. President George W. Bush has cut none of the agencies' budgets during his first term. But there are some numbers...

John Gorenfeld reports in the indispensable Gadflyer on the latest sign of the End Times: The coronation of Sun Myung Moon as Emperor and Messiah with a crown carried on a velvety purple cushion by Congressman Danny K. Davis. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA.), Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), Republican strategy god Charlie Black, Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), and Davis. One of Gorenfeld's highlights: "Rep. Curt Weldon's office tenaciously denied that the Congressman was there, before being provided by The Gadflyer with a photo depicting Weldon at the event, found on Moon's website. 'Apparently he was there, but we really had nothing to do with it,' press secretary Angela Sowa finally conceded. 'I don't think it's quite accurate that the Washington Times said that we hosted the event. We may have been a Congressional co-host, but we have nothing to do with the agenda, the organization, the scheduling, and our role would be limited explicitly to the attendance of the Congressman.' The spokeswoman for one senator, who asked that her boss not be named, said politicians weren't told the awards program was going to be a Moon event.... When the ceremony morphed into a platform...

Is this a new low in New York Times coverage of global economic issues? Perhaps. Not a word about benefits from ending the Multifiber Agreement for American consumers. Not a word on poor people in developing countries who have been kept in poverty because of artificial blocks to their ability to sell textiles to the United States. Not a word of explanation of why no developing-country governments want the MFA question reopened at the WTO. And no sense that the New York Times has any clue that it should have a reporter who knows the issue write this story. The New York Times: White House Shuns Role on Textile Quotas: By ELIZABETH BECKER. WASHINGTON, June 9 - More than 130 Republican and Democratic members of Congress asked President Bush on Wednesday to persuade the World Trade Organization to delay the phase-out of a global quota system on textiles and garments. The administration swiftly rejected the request, which would mean breaking a 10-year-old global agreement to end the quotas on Jan. 1, 2005. Ending the quotas could lead to a wide-ranging realignment of the industry and spell disaster for textile and apparel industries in dozens of nations, including those in...

The Economist lends the Bush administration a helping hand: Economist.com: ...a forecast that suggested America's economy would create 2.6m jobs this year. If job creation continues at today's pace, that forecast will prove too low. The claim that the Bush administration forecast was that "America's economy would create 2.6 million jobs this year" was obtained by subtracting the December 2003 employment number--130.1m--from 132.7m. But in the Bush administration forecast, 132.7m was not the forecast of employment in December 2004. The forecast of employment in December 2004 was 134.3m. 132.7m was the forecast of the average level of employment over the year. I realize that the Bush administration worked hard to confuse reporters on what, exactly, their forecast was. But that is only half an excuse. The Economist needs to work harder, and be better....

I'm going to go bang my head against the wall again. The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman writes: Jonathan Weisman Strikes Again: [George W.] Bush is not the first president to suffer from a disconnect between objective economic indicators and voter perceptions on the economy. The economy began growing steadily in March 1991, when President George H.W. Bush registered a 49 percent approval rating on his handling of the economy. But by July of 1992, those approval ratings had slid to an abysmal 25 percent, presaging his electoral defeat three months later.... Leave to one side the assumption that "objective economic indicators" are now "good"--the productivity numbers are indeed truly wonderful, but the employment and real wage situation is still lousy, albeit better than it was half a year ago. Focus, instead, on the assertion that during the period between March 1991 and July 1992 there was a "disconnect between objective economic indicators"--good--"and voter perceptions"--bad. But during that period the unemployment rate rose from 6.8% to 7.9%: that's a lot of powerful bad news about "objective economic conditions" in the labor market. You can say a bunch of things about the slide in George H.W. Bush's approval ratings between early 1991...

Wonkette listens to Chris Matthews on the TV, and loses it and runs screaming into the night: Gipperporn: The Triumph of the Unreal: Just when we thought we wouldn't actually learn anything from all this Reagan coverage, Chris Matthews gives us a real history lesson. Vamping a bit between MSNBC correspondents' interviews of Stepford Republicans, Matthews noted that, thanks to all of Reagan's war movies, "He seemed understand the experience of the Greatest Generation better than the guys who were actually in battle could." Yes, having a buddy bleed to death in your arms can dampen your enthusiasm for a war. But when your toughest wartime assignment is to keep your tan even, you don't really mind threatening to start another one. You see only the unreal is really real, and the real is really unreal, or something like that. Because the unreal is on the screen, and people, like, see it. But there are no cameras where things really happen, and so they're not really real. Or something like that. UPDATE: Wonkette resumes the attack! Let's let someone who, you know, was "actually in combat" take a swing at it. Tomorrow's Time contains this report: Television anchors and commentators...

One of the big problem with being on the big bus that is the global left is that one occasionally finds oneself seated next to destructive lunatic fools like George Monbiot. Where to begin? By pointing out that those who attend India's universities are, in India, an incredibly rich and privileged class, and that to denounce "privatization" and "user fees" to fund universities is to say that India's poor taxpayers should pay to further enrich India's rich university graduates? By pointing out that the Indian government has huge trouble collecting taxes, and that recouping some hospital fees from those who have money eases pressure on government budgets? By pointing out that India feeds itself, and that a principal task of Indian economic growth is to move workers from low-product